Posted on 01/20/2004 9:47:50 AM PST by knighthawk
All sensible husbands will agree with me when I say that it is very important to beat one's wife. They will therefore share my sympathy with Mohamed Kamal Mustafa, the preacher who was given a 15-month prison sentence in Spain last week for writing a book offering tips on wife-beating, the Muslim way.
In Women in Islam, published three years ago, Mr. Mustafa recommends a three-stage approach to keeping the little woman in order: first, give her verbal warnings; next, if she still refuses to mend her ways, subject her to a period of sexual abstinence; finally, if even stage two fails to do the trick, administer judicious beatings. "The blows should be concentrated on the hands and feet," Mr. Mustafa advises, "using a rod that is thin and light so that it does not leave scars or bruises on the body."
Mr. Mustafa may or may not be right when he claims that his methods are sanctioned by the Koran. That is a question for theologians to argue about. But what is quite clear is that, in writing his book, he was attempting to perform a public service. He was doing his best to help solve a problem that has bedevilled husbands through the ages. That hardly deserves a prison sentence.
I should say at once, before I am extradited to Spain and clapped in irons under a European arrest warrant, that I think Mr. Mustafa's advice is very stupid and bad.
For a start, verbal warnings are completely useless. I have lost count of the number of times, over the 24 years of our marriage, when I have warned my wife that she mustn't touch the little stash of unanswered letters and unpaid bills that I file away on the shelf in the kitchen behind the cookery books. But does she listen? Does she hell. She goes on tidying them away, so that nobody can ever find them again.
As for the threat of sexual abstinence, I conducted a little experiment in the office this week. I showed a number of my female colleagues a photograph of Mr. Mustafa, and asked them how they would feel if they were married to him, and he withdrew his sexual favours. Without exception, they said that they would regard it more as a relief than as a punishment.
Mr. Mustafa's most fatuous suggestion, of course, is that we should beat our wives physically. I say this not only because I am a coward, and I know that, if I hit my wife, she would hit me back a lot harder. Nor do I say it simply because I am old-fashioned enough to believe that hitting a woman is about the most contemptible thing that a man can do.
The advice is idiotic, because the moment when a man hits his wife is the moment when she has won. People often ask why battered wives keep going back to the husbands who attack them. At least a part of the answer must surely be that every blow that a man inflicts on a woman is a little victory for her. I know that this is no laughing matter, but do admit that there is a grain of truth in what I am saying.
Mr. Mustafa is quite right to identify marriage as a battleground, in which each partner is constantly seeking to defeat the other. But where he goes wrong is in completely mistaking the nature of the war and the weapons that are most likely to win it. For a man to beat his wife properly, he must never use a rod. The only effective weapons are psychological.
All couples are different, and there was never a truer word said than that you should never try to read a marriage.
For example, my wife and I have a pair of dear friends who have been married for ages and who, to all outward appearances, detest each other. Their life is a constant shouting match.
The last time we saw them was at a wedding in the country, where he started the fight by saying: "You bloody stupid woman! You've forgotten to pack my tie!" You can imagine how the conversation developed from there, with her reflections on whose responsibility it was to pack his clothes, and his protestations that he had far more important things to think about than filling a suitcase, and her observation that, if packing was so bloody unimportant, then why was he getting so hot under the [tie-less] collar about it ...
For the first year or two of their mega-decibel marriage, I was convinced that they were charging towards the divorce courts. But now I think that they will still be together, long after our lovier-dovier friends have parted. They have struck on a method of conducting the psychological warfare of marriage that suits them both to a T.
I would never dare to tell my wife that she was a bloody stupid woman, even if she forgot to pack my tie for a wedding. That is because I have always been more comfortable with passive aggression than with the active sort. I specialize in the hurt, martyred, Princess Di look. Had I found myself in the same circumstances as my tie-less friend, I would probably have said something like: "Don't worry, darling, it's only a stupid tie. I don't suppose anyone will notice that I look like a complete wally." And she would understand everything.
I feel a book coming on: How to Beat Your Wife, the Western Way, Without Risking a Prison Sentence.
HAH!
Just try it. They'll laugh and tell you they can hold out longer than you!
Really -- there must be something in Muslim culture that we don't understand. Either that or these Jihadis are not only Darwins when it comes to world affairs.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.